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Tag Archives: Nationalism

Horace B. Davis sees a division in the origins of nationalism within Europe; one referred to by him as ‘nationalism of the Enlightenment’, the other that of ‘Herder and Fichte’. A similar dualism is played out even with distinctions based on the nature of nationalism, such as political vs. cultural. Kohn, for example, associates political nationalism with the West: “Its purpose was to create a liberal and rational civil society… English and American nationalism was in its origin connected with the concepts of individual liberty and represented nations firmly constituted in their political life.” As against this the Eastern society developed: “in lands which were in political ideas and social structure less advanced than the modern West. There was only a weak middle class; the nation was split between a feudal aristocracy and a rural proletariat. Thus nationalism became… a cultural movement… to oppose the ‘alien’ example and its liberal and rational outlook.”

Various shades of such distinctions have come under criticism even within the European discourse on nationalism. For example Anthony Smith says: The pedagogical narrative of western democracies turns out to be every bit as demanding and rigorous – and in practice ethnically one-sided – as are those of non-western authoritarian state-nations, since it assumes the assimilation of ethnic minorities within the borders of the nation-state through acculturation to a hegemonic majority ethnic culture.

Another dualist approach refers to civic and ethnic nationalism. As Anthony Smith defines it, civic nationalism is characterised by “historic territory, legal-political community, legal-political equality of members, and common civic culture and ideology; these are the components of the standard Western model of the nation”. In contrast to this, ethnic nationalism is “first and foremost a community of common descent.”

Many commentators on nationalism have pointed out the schism in the self-perception of nationalism and its perceptions by observers. Anderson talks, for example, about the paradox of “the objective modernity of nations to the historian’s eye vs. their subjective antiquity in the eyes of the nationalists.” Gellner observes: “Nationalism is not what it seems, and above all not what it seems to itself.” This, too familiar trope of dualism, leads Homi Bhabha to comment: “What I want to emphasise in that large and liminal image of the nation… is a particular ambivalence that haunts the idea of the nation, the language of those who write of it and the lives of those who live it.”

One of the dualisms in the definition of nation is what Hobsbawm terms as the objective and subjective approach. The objective attempt to define a nation may look for objective criteria such as language, territory, cultural traits, etc. Such a definition does not proceed far before encountering exceptions that contradict the rule. This is so because, as Hobsbawm observes: “the criteria used for this purpose – language, ethnicity or whatever – are themselves fuzzy, shifting and ambiguous.” Nevertheless, it is true that often nationalists employ such a vocabulary to mobilise support for nationalist programmes: something quite evident in a number of national anthems that combine references to territory, history, cultural traits, rivers, eco-systems and so on to evoke loyalty towards nationalist programmes.

Subjective definitions refer to collective will, common consent, voluntary choice, etc. That the will of a group of people to form a ‘nation’ does not necessarily engender one is indication enough that subjective definitions are inadequate to explain the concept of ‘nation’. Consciousness and choice as determinants of nation obscure the web of parameters that human beings employ in defining themselves. The partial explanations these two approaches provide and their inadequacies in defining nation are symptomatic. As Hobsbawm says, “Nor indeed is it possible to reduce even ‘nationality’ to a single dimension, whether political, cultural or otherwise”.

There has been a near consensus over the destructive power of nationalism, which is the context in which such classifications as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalism are made. The duality between good and bad nationalism is stated in various ways. As Partha Chatterjee observes: “Seen as part of the story of liberty, nationalism could be defined as a rational ideological framework for the realization of rational and highly laudable political ends. But that was not how nationalism has made its presence felt in much of recent history. It has been the cause of the most destructive wars ever seen; it has justified the brutality of Nazism and Fascism; it has become the ideology of racial hatred in the colonies and has given birth to some of the most irrational revivalist movements as also to the most oppressive political regimes in the contemporary world.

Timothy Brennan has suggested that nationalism in Europe was a project of unity on the basis of colonial conquests and economic and administrative units; but in the ‘third world’ nationalism is mainly a project of consolidation of territorial units established by the coloniser. However, there is also another way in which this duality is played out. The travails of a postcolonial nation are offered as a proof of the debilitating effects of nationalism (see the opening pages of Anderson, 1991, Hobsbawm, 1992, Chatterjee, 1993, Mondal, 2003, etc.). At the end of a nationalist struggle to establish political freedom, why do postcolonial nation-states offer examples of the destructive power of nationalism? The answer is mired in the politics of representation of the ‘third world’ in the ‘first world’ discourse of social sciences. But that apart, it should be noted that what now appears to be skirmishes between the various groups within a nation-state need not necessarily be new, and that it is possible to see their origins in the nationalist struggle of those nation-states. That various conflicts are coming into view now is no reason to believe that they have their origin in the present. The conflicts are not necessarily the negative effects of nationalism that has a distinct positive effect in its emancipatory project.

I think such internal incommensurability cannot be distinguished from nationalism’s emancipatory energy (the good, the liberal nationalism, the positive effects and so on) and that they are integral constituents of the phenomena of nationalism. What it means is that nationalism in its programme of producing a nation is never a singular effort with a coherent end in sight but in its very structure it is constituted by conflictual projects. Howsoever small a community nationalism aims to produce through its identity politics, the nation produced is an ensemble of differing identity claims, which is why it is not a seamless singularity. This is also the reason why both nation and nationalism are plural and they do not escape the heteroglossia that characterises the interests they claim to represent.

Literature on nationalism is replete with the trope of duality. Somehow everyone seems to find one or the other schism in the nature or meaning of nationalism. Thus, we have good and bad nationalism, Western and Eastern nationalism, nationalisms of the oppressors and the oppressed, original and pirate, liberal and illiberal, civic and ethnic, etc. The grounds on which these classifications are made are different but in much of the scholarship on nationalism, an urge to employ a schismatic view is common. Even when some of the scholars go on to further sub-divisions, they begin with a duality.

Partha Chatterjee in the opening chapter of his book Nationalist Thought and the Colonial Word: A Derivative Discourse? refers to the two types of nationalism characterised by John Plamenatz. One type, according to Plamenatz, is ‘Western’ and has its origins in Western Europe and the second type is ‘Eastern’, which originated in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The strange mingling and division of continents for labelling the two types of nationalism is in itself noteworthy. Plamenatz was not alone in employing the vocabulary of ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ types of nationalism. Hans Kohn also employs similar terms: ‘western’ and ‘non-western’, which are later termed as good and evil nationalisms. For Kohn, Western nationalism developed out of Enlightenment and suggests the bourgeois individuals’ attempt at rational pursuit of legitimate interest. Contrarily, Eastern nationalism for Kohn is primarily based on the Western model and is a reaction to it.

Marx and Engels, despite maintaining that ‘the working men have no country’, distinguish between ‘historic’ and ‘non- historic’ nations. They contrast the ‘large and well defined historical nations’ with the ‘ruins of peoples…’ which are ‘no longer capable of a national existence…’ This line of argument receives greater clarity in Lenin when he makes a distinction between oppressor and oppressed nations. Isolating Lenin’s comments which is related to his theory of imperialism may not be very useful but the tendency to divide nationalism is noteworthy. Attending to the ‘Janus face’of nationalism, Anthony Smith says, “despite the capacity of nationalisms to generate widespread terror and destruction, the nation and nationalism provide the only realistic socio-cultural framework for a modern world order.”

Tom Nairn’s suggestion is that “all nationalism is both healthy and morbid. Both progress and regress are inscribed in its genetic code from the start.” Spencer and Wollman list thirteen contrasting distinctions to be found in the literature on nationalism, mostly along the lines of Western and Eastern nationalism. Generally, Western nationalism is seen as political, liberal, rational, historical, etc. and Eastern nationalism is seen as cultural, ethnic, illiberal, non-historic, etc. It is true that not everyone is totally Euro-centric in prescribing these definitive divisions, yet the propensity for finding dualism in nationalism itself speaks for the divergences in the phenomena. Ernest Gellner’s typology of zones also seems to suggest an East-West divide with his notion of the different nationalisms moving towards the western models.

The foregoing discussion has exemplified the schismatic view of nationalism in relation to its origins. Next post I will turn from the ‘where’ to the ‘when’ of the origins of nationalism.

Bernard Shaw in Saint Joan sees the beginnings of nationalism in the legend of Joan. That would place its origins as far back as 14th century. Notwithstanding how far back or in the recent past we place the origin of nationalism, theorisation on the subject has had a long history. It is therefore remarkable how often the complaint that it is an area under-theorised comes up. Walter Bagehot, who in his 1887 book Physics and Politics views the nineteenth century as an age of ‘nation building’, confesses to some perplexity about nation: “We know what it is when you do not ask us, but we cannot very quickly explain or define it.” This finds an echo in the frustration of Hugh Seton-Watson who said in 1977, “I am driven to the conclusion that no ‘scientific definition’ of the nation can be devised; yet the phenomenon has existed and exists.” Tom Nairn acidly observes, “The theory of nationalism represents Marxism’s greatest historical failure.” Reviewing the field in 1990, Hobsbawm finds only eleven books on the subject worthy of consultation and hints at the clarity available from them when he comments, “Nation-watching would be simple if it could be like bird-watching.” Benedict Anderson observes, “In contrast to the immense influence that nationalism has exerted on the modern world, plausible theory about it is conspicuously meagre.” Partha Chatterjee calls nation “the one most untheorized concept of the modern world”. Even as late as 2003, Anshuman Mondal notes the “growing dissatisfaction with the theories or models of nationalism currently on offer.”

It is possible to find more thinkers who generally agree that nation and nationalism are inadequately theorised. Considering that the phenomenon is an everyday reality and has determined the social existence for the last few centuries, it is, to put it mildly, puzzling that theorisation of the subject should be found inadequate – that too when thinkers from a variety of ideological persuasions have written treatises on it. For all the diverse discussions, from sociological, political, economic, cultural and a host of other perspectives, there is very little coherent theorisation that is left unchallenged by some other, subsequent one. That is, there has been an amazing amount of scholarship that defines, describes and prescribes nationalism/ nation/ nation-state, most of which differ from the rest, though ever so slightly. Little concurrence can be observed across the spectrum on the origins, meaning, function and causes and effects of nationalism or nation. What is significant is that, here is an idea about which there is very little incomprehension, near nigh lack of experience and exposure, yet many feel that it remains inadequately defined. I disagree with the view that theorisation itself is lacking or that thinkers have generally failed to explain the phenomena of nations and nationalisms. Instead, the very dissatisfaction is to be seen as signifying something: nations and nationalisms are not universally similar entities though the phenomena are found all over the world. The implication of this common dissatisfaction is an important sign of their condition of being.